When our PM stopped the ‘crooked bridge’ project, one of the reasons was that Singapore attached a condition that we have to sell them our sand. There were so much emotions raised and the rakyat agreed that we have to ‘ jaga maruah ’ and not sell our sand for the project to continue.

How about allowing foreigners to buy our property? The upper range of houses and condos in JB are owned by foreigners from Singapore. About a third of cars on JB roads are Singapore- registered especially during week-ends.

They spend a lot of money shopping, draining away our fuel and food subsidies and also make JB and the surrounding areas very expensive to live in for the common rakyat . Who benefits in this process? Just a few tycoons who are the property developers (of course, with ropes attached to the ruling elite) and business communities.

Who suffers when the roads are congested, food prices spiral and cost of living goes up in JB? Just the poorer and middle-income rakyat . Now we have introduced Malaysia ‘My Second Home’ programme and the rich foreigners ‘buy’ our properties. Who benefits?

If I am not mistaken, a few years ago when a hyper-market wanted to open up in a small town in Johore, there was opposition from the local retail community that it would affect their business.

Then it was decided by the BN government that unless the population was above three hundred thousand, hyper markets would not be allowed. My reasoning is this. That town could have two hundred thousand residents. The business community could be about a few thousand.

Should the rakyat numbering few hundred thousand, for the sake of the survival of a few thousand business people, pay higher prices for their daily needs? I do not understand the logic. If the local retail community cannot survive competing with hypermarkets, let them do something else like the other rakyat. We are tired of these profiteers.

I am not a economics person hence I may be wrong about all the above. It would be good to have someone from high up explaining this to the common man.